The Slummer: Quarters Till Death

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Passing on the baton to our children seems like an obvious idea, but Jansson’s depiction of the magic bond that can be developed between the elderly and children is nothing short of a miracle, a gem to be treasured, nurtured and understood as one of those important things that give meaning and purpose to life. She's a queen, a crone, a woman who has outlived her husband and her son's wife and has “reached the age where a person can safely be truthful” about certain things. Die Idylle ist in diesen Episoden so flüchtig wie die kurze Zeit im Frühsommer, in der das Moos blüht und die ganze Insel mit einem warmen, kaum sichtbaren Schleier überzieht. Do they make it feel more like a children’s book, or is this a kind of adult book that drawings belong in?

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson | Waterstones The Summer Book by Tove Jansson | Waterstones

I particularly relished her depiction of the grandmother which steers well clear of the many appalling stereotypes too often found in representations of elderly women. Brilliant, inspiring and sometimes very bleak, this story serves as both an underdog fairytale of a boy's love of running and a stark warning about the future.There is nothing comforting about it, and yet if you are afraid to see it in his own terms and look to it for comfort, for solace, you’ll be left worse off than you were before”. Here is a book in no need of magic or any other fantastical adornments as she reminds us that we can discover pure, beautiful magic in the natural world all around us if only we quiet our lives and open our eyes to it.

Books For Your Summer Reading List - The New York Times The Best Books For Your Summer Reading List - The New York Times

Should you be born naturally as a Slummer you’ll merely work to survive if you’re lucky enough to secure a job. She’s also adept at conveying the pace and rhythm of island life with its well-honed routines and seasonal rituals - not surprising since it’s based on Klovharu a place she visited for over 30 years and where she built a summer cabin. Winters were spent in the family’s art-filled studio and summers in the fisherman’s cottage on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, a setting that would later figure in Jansson’s writing for adults and children. So, this girl Sophia and her grandmother, and by the way, her dad is there too but in Sophia's world he's just a background force, like the weather, and not a character. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review 's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers.Signe Hammarsten-Jansson – Jansson's mother and the real-life model for the character of Sophia's grandmother. Amidst the joyful effervescence of summer are the grim realities of mortal lives that must interact with one another. An impoverished runner, from an era of prolific genetic engineering, chases his dream of the 5000-meter national title. Jansson's variety of episodes, ranging from those where little of note seems to happen to the modestly dramatic (including one of the great storms in recent memory, which Sophia thinks she caused -- only to have her grandmother take that burden from her), are at best loosely connected, yet this mosaic approach makes for a very rich picture.

THE SUMMER BOOK – Reading Group Choices THE SUMMER BOOK – Reading Group Choices

Grandmother takes cigarette breaks to keep her chatty granddaughter, Sophia, at bay, and she favors crawling, on all fours, when her dizziness is bad. Sometimes Grandmother tells bold-faced lies and sometimes her granddaughter sticks letters under her door: “I hate you. This was written 40 years ago but is really timeless in its story of a child's unrelenting thirst for knowledge and stubborn daily brawls with the world at large. Many of the men who appear in her story seem lacking in some sense or simply out of step with their environment: the father nearly destroys the surrounding vegetation when he imports exotic plants, diverting resources away from native varieties; a wealthy man builds an extravagant house close to the family’s cabin, an eyesore that disrupts the shoreline.But the unique-closeness they shared had something to do with ‘quantity’ time, close proximity, the ‘day-to-day’ interaction with each other. An island* — *summers* — “are often described as being impossible to categorize or describe, as if to suggest that they defy not only human powers of speech but also, obstinately, comprehension”. Accompanying her awe-inspiring words are her gorgeous illustrations, which make a perfect match by being both simple, yet magnificent. Yet this threat doesn’t dominate Jansson’s story which is packed with moments of unexpected comedy and wry observations. Much of the flora and fauna – bird-cherry trees, long-tailed ducks – are also common in the Kalevala, and consequently these species now seem to me, rightly or wrongly, to be archetypally Finnish.

The Summer Book – New York Review Books The Summer Book – New York Review Books

I loved the race scenes, and as an avid runner training for a marathon at the moment this book served as phenomal inspiration. The Slummer: Quarters Till Death by Geoffrey Simpson is a sci-fi sports dystopia set in the Cleveland area in 2083. Translated from Swedish and written in 1974 these 22 short vignettes occur on a small island off the Gulf of Finland. It is summer and Sophia and her grandmother share adventures, break the rules, and befriend one another; one on a path of discovery and the other contemplating and sharing all the things she has gleaned over a lifetime.She was old enough to be a grandmother, but of course she was also a daughter, and one who had just lost her mother, a condition mirrored in the books unusual point of view, which hovers above and around the island and seems not so much to move from grandmother to granddaughter as to share them, inhibiting both sensitivities in a manner of weather.